Abstract
The paper discusses the role of visions within sustainability assessment and governance for sustainable development in Europe. Currently, our societies (still) develop along an unsustainable path, which results in a number of persistent problems (climate change, loss of biodiversity, poverty, etc.). Integrated sustainability assessment (ISA) is one approach designed to initiate transitions towards sustainability. Visions of a sustainable future form an important part of ISA. These visions support the process of discussing how the transition from today’s societies/systems to a sustainable future can be achieved. According to the principles of ISA, visions should be developed in a participatory way, thus including the ideas and perceptions of stakeholders, decision-makers, experts and/or citizens. The paper starts with an introduction of the concepts of visions and scenarios and describes exemplary methods for their participatory development. Then, the main concepts for integrated sustainability assessment in comparison with other impact assessments are discussed. The main body of the paper presents experiences in three projects (ARTEMIS, ALARM, ECOCHANGE) in which visions and scenarios of sustainable futures were developed with stakeholders. The paper concludes with lessons learned and suggestions for future applications for participatory scenario development.
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Notes
Due to the very high level of renewables this rest only accounts for about 20% in the scenarios.
Three so-called “shock scenarios” were also developed.
Not each project serves as an example to support the answers given to the questions, but depending on the scope of the projects, some questions only build on our experiences from one project. As the EcoChange project is still under elaboration, it can only provide limited evidence so far.
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Acknowledgments
This paper builds on the experiences from four projects—we are grateful for the funding that made our work possible: The ARTEMIS project was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, http://www.fwf.ac.at; Project Number P16734-G04); ALARM, MATISSE and ECOCHANGE were/are funded by the European Commission (DG Research; project numbers: GOCE-CT-2003-506675 ALARM, 004059 (GOCE)—MATISSE; FP6-036866 ECOCHANGE). Many thanks also to the anonymous referees of the first version of this paper for their valuable and constructive feedback.
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Bohunovsky, L., Jäger, J. & Omann, I. Participatory scenario development for integrated sustainability assessment. Reg Environ Change 11, 271–284 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-010-0143-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-010-0143-3